Science & Technology Quiz: Nuclear Programme of India

The correct answer is A, Tarapur. The Tarapur Atomic Power Station in Maharashtra was commissioned in 1969 with American assistance and was the first nuclear power station in India as well as in Asia; its first two units are boiling water reactors, a design used nowhere else in the country. Option B is wrong because Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu is the newest of the large stations and uses Russian pressurised water reactors of the VVER type. Option C is wrong because Kaiga in Karnataka came much later and uses indigenous pressurised heavy water reactors. Option D is wrong because Rawatbhata in Rajasthan, built with Canadian collaboration, was the second station and is important for a different reason, being the first to use the pressurised heavy water reactor that India later built on its own. Remember Tarapur for the first station and Rawatbhata for the first heavy water reactor.

The correct answer is A, heavy water. The CANDU design, from which India's pressurised heavy water reactors descend, burns natural uranium, and natural uranium contains only about seven parts in a thousand of the fissile isotope uranium 235. Such a lean fuel can sustain a chain reaction only if very few neutrons are wasted, and heavy water absorbs far fewer neutrons than ordinary water while still slowing them down, so it serves as both moderator and coolant. Option B is wrong because light water absorbs too many neutrons, which is why reactors that use it must be fuelled with enriched uranium. Option C is wrong because carbon dioxide is used as a coolant in gas cooled reactors, where graphite is the moderator. Option D is wrong because liquid sodium is the coolant of a fast breeder reactor, which deliberately has no moderator at all.

The correct answer is C, a mixture of water and steam. In a boiling water reactor, the design used at Tarapur, ordinary water is allowed to boil inside the reactor vessel itself, so the coolant leaving the core is a mixture of water and steam; the steam is separated at the top and driven straight to the turbine, without the separate steam generator that other designs need. Option A is wrong because carbon dioxide cools gas cooled reactors, not water reactors. Option B is wrong because pressurised water is the coolant of the pressurised water reactor, where the pressure is kept high precisely so that the water does not boil, which is the difference between the two designs. Option D is wrong because liquid metal, usually sodium, cools a fast breeder reactor. The single fact to carry into the hall is that boiling water reactors boil the water in the core and pressurised reactors do not.

The correct answer is B, Homi Jehangir Bhabha. Bhabha founded the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 1945, became the first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1948, drew up the three stage plan built around India's thorium, and led the establishment at Trombay that was renamed the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre after his death in 1966. Option A is wrong because Vikram Sarabhai is the father of the Indian space programme, although he did chair the Atomic Energy Commission after Bhabha. Option C is wrong because Raja Ramanna led the team that carried out the Pokhran test of 1974, an important role but a later one. Option D is wrong because A. P. J. Abdul Kalam is associated with missile development and with the Pokhran tests of 1998. Bhabha for atomic energy and Sarabhai for space is the pair to fix.

The correct answer is B, Trombay. Apsara went critical at Trombay near Mumbai on 4 August 1956 and was the first nuclear research reactor not only in India but in the whole of Asia; the CIRUS reactor of 1960 and the Dhruva reactor of 1985 were built at the same site, which is today the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. Option A is wrong because Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu is the home of the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research and of the fast breeder reactors, work that began much later. Option C is wrong because Rawatbhata in Rajasthan is a power station site, not a research reactor site. Option D is wrong because Tarapur is also a power station, commissioned thirteen years after Apsara. Keep research reactors at Trombay and fast breeders at Kalpakkam clearly apart.

The correct answer is B, fast breeder reactors. The second stage uses the plutonium 239 recovered from the spent fuel of the first stage as the fuel of a fast breeder reactor, with a blanket of thorium around the core that is converted into uranium 233; a breeder produces more fissile material than it burns, which is how the programme builds up a stock of fuel for the third stage. Option A is wrong because pressurised heavy water reactors burning natural uranium make up the first stage. Option C is wrong because boiling water reactors were imported for Tarapur and were never part of the staged plan. Option D is wrong because gas cooled reactors have no place in the Indian programme at all. Learn the chain in order: natural uranium, then plutonium with a thorium blanket, then uranium 233 from thorium.

The correct answer is B, Smiling Buddha. The test was carried out in the desert at Pokhran in Rajasthan on 18 May 1974 and was described by India as a peaceful nuclear explosion; Raja Ramanna led the team. Option A is wrong because Operation Shakti is the name of the second round of tests, the five devices fired on 11 and 13 May 1998 at the same range, after which India declared itself a nuclear weapon state. Option C is wrong because Operation Vijay is the name given to the military operation in Kargil in 1999, which has nothing to do with the nuclear tests. Option D is wrong because Dhruva is a research reactor at Trombay that began working in 1985, not a test. Note also that National Technology Day on 11 May marks the 1998 tests, not the 1974 one.

The correct answer is B, the Pokhran nuclear tests of 1998. On 11 May 1998 India tested three nuclear devices at Pokhran under Operation Shakti, followed by two more on 13 May, and the day was declared National Technology Day to mark that achievement along with the test flight of the Trishul missile and the first flight of the Hansa aircraft on the same day. Option A is wrong because Aryabhata, India's first satellite, was launched on 19 April 1975. Option C is wrong because the Apsara research reactor became critical on 4 August 1956 and has no day named after it. Option D is wrong because the Atomic Energy Commission was set up in 1948, again with no commemorative day. The trap here is 1974, which candidates often pick because it is the better remembered test.

The correct answer is A, Jharkhand. The Jaduguda mine lies in the Singhbhum belt of Jharkhand and has been worked by the Uranium Corporation of India Limited, a public sector company set up in 1967, since the late nineteen sixties; it was the first uranium mine in the country. Option B is wrong because Andhra Pradesh does hold large uranium deposits, notably at Tummalapalle in the Kadapa basin, but that mine is far more recent. Option C is wrong because Meghalaya has known deposits in the Domiasiat area that have not been mined. Option D is wrong because Rajasthan is associated with the Rawatbhata power station and the Pokhran test range, not with uranium mining. Remember that India is poor in uranium but rich in thorium, which comes from the monazite sands of the Kerala and Odisha coasts.

The correct answer is C, Russia. Kudankulam in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu uses pressurised water reactors of the Russian VVER type, supplied under an agreement signed with the Soviet Union in 1988 and carried forward by Russia. Option A is wrong because the United States supplied the boiling water reactors of the first station at Tarapur in the nineteen sixties. Option B is wrong because France has been discussed as a partner for a station in Maharashtra but did not build Kudankulam. Option D is wrong because Canada supplied the reactor at Rawatbhata in Rajasthan and the CIRUS research reactor, and that cooperation ended after the test of 1974. The three foreign links worth remembering are the United States with Tarapur, Canada with Rawatbhata and Russia with Kudankulam.